Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 67

A Bizarre Scene in the Gospel of Philip: Jesus Kissing Mary

Did Jesus and Mary Magdalene have an affair? Now that I've mentioned the Gospel of Philip, I can't help but repost a blog from a few years ago, dealing with one of the most intriguing, not to say titillating, passages from this otherwise somewhat obscure Valentinian Gospel. My original post on the topic was in [...]

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The Gospel of Philip: An Example of a Valentinian Gnostic Gospel

In my previous post discussing Valentinian Gnosticism I mentioned an intriguing Valentinian text, the Gospel of Philip.   Now I'd like to explain what it is and give you a bit of the opening section in translation so you can get a taste of it yourself.   I've taken all this from the second edition of my [...]

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A Different Kind of Gnostic: The Valentinians

In my last several posts I've been talking about Sethian Gnostics, beginning with a description of what they believe and then discussing one Sethian text, the Gospel of Judas. Sethians weren't the only kind of Gnostic floating around in the second and third century; there may have been lots of other groups (since we only [...]

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Check Out This Gnostic Myth from the Gospel of Judas!

A lot of people over the years have told me they are drawn to the Gnostic way of looking at things, but it’s pretty clear they’ve never actually read any Gnostic texts.   Gnosticism is a lot easier to like in the abstract than in the on-the-ground (or out-of-this-world) reality. When scholars typically describe Gnosticism to [...]

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The Gospel of Judas: Here’s a Taste of It

Here is the first bit of the Gospel of Judas from the translation of my colleague Zlatko Pleše in our book The Other Gospels. The first paragraph is the explanation of where we got the text from; then the translation of the opening scene. After this bit here, the Gospel gets very strange, at least [...]

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Want to Sit in on My October Gold Q&A (Monday Oct 30)?

I will be recording my Gold Q&A tomorrow, October 30, at 8:00 pm Eastern Time.  Wanna come?  I'll be doing it on Zoom so any gold or platinum member who wants to listen in is welcome.  I've gotten a lot of unusually intriguing questions this time, and will not be able to answer all of [...]

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The Gospel of Judas: The Most Recently Discovered Sethian Gnostic Gospel

For anyone interested in Gnosticism, the most recent full Gnostic Gospel to appear, the Gospel of Judas, is a real treasure.  In my previous post I described the broad contours of Gnostic views and the more specific Sethian understanding of the divine realm, the world, humans, an salvation.  Different Sethians, of course, would have different views [...]

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Gnostic Views in General and the More Specific Views of One Known Group (The Sethians)

I can now describe as succinctly as possible the basic views that appear to have been widely shared among various of the Gnostic groups, before giving a bit more detailed information on one of our best known groups, the Sethians.  All this is taken from my textbook The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the [...]

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Some of the Difficulties in Understanding Gnosticism

Now that I've discussed the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library, I can move into the kinds of religion found among these books, popularly known as the "Gnostic Gospels."  And that will involve laying out the views found among the various Christian groups of the second and third century (principally) that scholars call Gnostic.  Gnosticism [...]

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Aren’t You Inconsistent in Your View of the Historicity of the Gospels?

Do contradictions in a story show that it didn't happen?  When I first responded (a few days ago) to Mark Goodacre’s five points calling into question the traditional story of the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library, I was intrigued to receive a number of comments suggesting I sure seemed to be inconsistent in how [...]

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